Body Language
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which Benny is observant and then kind of clueless. Benny/Ethan.


Body Language

_**Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: knows me better than I know myself. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.**_

* * *

Benny is ridiculously good at reading his best friend. It's an ability that he's honed over time, in the decade that they've been friends. He knows when Ethan's happy or sad or crushing on someone or scared out of his mind or any other emotion under the sun.

Like now, for instance, he's setting off alarm bells because Benny's pretty sure he's getting sick.

Ethan doesn't get sick often. He has one of those awesomely efficient immune systems. Everyone around him can be sick and Ethan won't get it. But apparently something got passed his defenses because he's all hunched over at his desk and he's got his head braced on one hand while he slowly writes with the other. Benny ignores the words being scribbled on the chalkboard in favor of watching him and sees him pause every few seconds to put pressure on his head, like he's trying to relieve a headache or something, squinting his eyes against the light and not looking up. That's weird in and of itself because this is math and Ethan is good at math and happens to kind of like this class so the lack of attention is weird.

"Mr. Morgan," the teacher says, having rattled off a question they both missed. "Would you care to answer?"

"Uh," Ethan says, floundering to figure out where they are.

Benny works quickly, mumbling a spell under his breath and hopes it works because Latin is hard, okay? Either Ethan will feel better or he'll start avoiding Benny because the Latin words for those things are kind of close together, if he remembers right.

And it must work because Ethan sits up a little straighter, clears his throat and comes up with the answer, appeasing the building wrath of the teacher, before he turns and shoots Benny a grateful smile before he turns back to his notes, diligently writing to catch up with the equations written on the board.

* * *

"Stop."

"What?" Ethan asks, frowning in confusion.

"That thing. Stop it."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Benny sighs and gestures to Ethan's general Ethan-ness. "You're doing that thing. You do it when you're nervous and now it's making me nervous, so if you could maybe not do it for a few minutes, while we're dealing with the crazy video game character who is not in his game, and who also wants to kill us, that would be awesome."

He's talking about Ethan's hands, where his fingers are tapping out a fast staccato rhythm on the edge of the book that Benny is trying to flip through; his feet, the equally irregular bounce he has going on that jostles Benny's leg because they're presently crammed into a small closet together in an attempt to hide from the machine gun wielding soldier.

"Sorry," Ethan huffs, but he doesn't stop.

Benny presses his shoulder against Ethan's, moving closer in the confined space and miraculously, it seems to calm Ethan down just enough to get him to hold still for a second, so that Benny can read.

But, then the door is crashing open and they're running for their lives, Benny casting spells over his shoulder as they go, so maybe Ethan's nerves aren't the biggest issue right now.

* * *

Sarah saves them.

Benny is not surprised.

But he is kind of irritated. Now he has to watch Ethan's fear morph into his endless crushing on her. And really? It's been more than a year. It does get old. It's been old for a while now, really. He sighs and waits for the tells, the dopey smiling, the blown wide brown eyes, the way he angles himself toward her and starts to mirror her.

Benny doesn't know why he's become such an expert when it comes to body language (probably some combination of his ever-wandering attention and a fixation on Ethan he'll refuse to admit if asked) and notes that Sarah doesn't seem to reciprocate.

"Dude," he says, catching Ethan's arm because they're supposed to be at Ethan's place right now, doing a project for History and not gallivanting around town avoiding crazy super-soldiers. "We should get back."

Ethan snaps out of his awkward conversation with Sarah, who looks kind of relieved as she excuses herself to get back to Jane at the park, and follows Benny out.

* * *

So.

They're invisible.

All told, it's not the worst thing that's happened since the whole vampires in White Chapel thing started, but it's pretty high on the list. Top five, maybe, Benny thinks, as he watches the pages of his spell book as they seem to move on their own. He's turning the pages, but should anyone walk in, they wouldn't think so.

Ethan is hovering over his shoulder. Benny can't see him, obviously, but he can feel his breath on the back of his neck and hear his frustrated grumblings at the lack of a counter-spell.

"Nothing?"

"To be fair, Allistair has had considerably more training than me and his spell-book might have things that mine doesn't. We should wait until-"

"He said if we didn't reverse it soon, we'd be stuck like this," he reminds Benny, as if he's forgotten the only reason that they aren't having a blast with this situation. "Benny," he says, and there's the whine, the way Ethan says his name like it's some sort of spell of its own, drawing it out and Benny has trouble saying 'no' to that. It gets him in a lot of trouble, actually. "Can't you try something?"

Their present state of invisibility hinders his usual ability to read his best friend, but he doesn't have to be a genius to pick up on scared and annoyed. He's scared and annoyed, too. Starting out his Saturday by getting cursed by an overly competitive sorcerer was not in his plans. He doesn't want to get stuck like this, either. It would be fun at first, but...

He stands, slams into Ethan (because, duh, he can't see him) and tries to catch the other boy with hands that can't find him. "Yeah, we really need to fix this." He walks for the door, but then there's his name again, and he turns back to see... nothing? Right. Nothing.

"Uh, where are you?"

"By the door," Benny answers and then Ethan's walking into him, groping along his arm until he can catch Benny's hand.

"So we don't lose each other," Ethan explains.

"Right."

They find Benny's Grandma at some sort of book club meeting (sneaking in is easy enough). She is not amused and lets them suffer for the rest of the night before she undoes the spell with a few simple words.

* * *

Benny suspects Ethan is mad at him.

It's not a new thing. Ethan's been mad at him before. It happens. They get over it. But, usually, Benny has some idea of what he's done to cause said anger, but this time he's got nothing.

Except they're in the last class of the day and Ethan hasn't said a word to him, despite the fact that they sit next to each other in three of their classes. Ethan avoided him at lunch, too, making some excuse about looking something up in the library. Now, now that Ethan's trapped with him again for this last class, he's all folded arms and frowns and terse responses to Benny's questions regarding their group work project.

"Dude," Rory says, and apparently even he's caught on to Ethan's bitchiness. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Ethan replies, putting on a facade of nothingness to replace the anger. It doesn't work. "I'm just tired."

Except this isn't Ethan when he's tired. A tired Ethan is frowny, yes, but not grumpy. Tired Ethan has a tendency to lean against things, people, himself, and just kind of drag himself around like a zombie until he can sleep, until he can he's kind of a sleep-drunk sort of funny. Benny knows tired Ethan, after hundreds of late night movies and video game marathons and all-nighters, he has to know that.

Benny raises a skeptical eyebrow and gets a glare for his trouble.

"What'd I do?" Benny asks because, honestly, he doesn't _know._

"Nothing," Ethan answers again, this time with a resigned sigh. "Really nothing. It's Sarah."

Benny frowns, confused because "why does being mad at Sarah equal avoiding me?"

Ethan doesn't answer that.

* * *

Sarah is no help. He finds her afterschool, when he'd normally be walking home with Ethan, and all she does is tell him that she told Ethan that she wasn't interested in him, not like he wanted her to be, and that she's pretty sure he's kind of into someone else, anyway.

And, yeah, okay. That explains the mad at Sarah part, but not the mad at Benny part and so he's out of answers again.

He goes home, also an unusual trend. Even his Grandma questions his presence there, with a confused, "don't you usually do your homework at Ethan's?" like she doesn't already know that he does.

"Sarah turned him down, he's not particularly fun to be around right now."

She bops him lightly on the back of his head because, "shouldn't you be helping him recover from that?"

"I would, but for some reason he's mad at me! Like it's my fault that Sarah's an idiot and doesn't want to date him?" He ignores the curiously amused look she shoots at him and stalks upstairs with his backpack. Ethan's bad mood has put him in a bad mood now, great.

An hour passes before there's a knock on his door. He thinks it's his Grandma, coming to maybe offer him advice on what to do about Ethan or to tell him that he needs to keep up with his spell practice, but it's Ethan on the other side of the door.

He looks sheepish and mumbles out "sorry," before Benny can do anything. "Sorry, I was a jerk. I mean. It wasn't your fault. Sarah just..."

"She told me."

"What?"

"That she turned you down?" He doesn't want to say it, afraid that it'll bring back grumpy Ethan, but he just gets sad Ethan instead, eyes glued on the floor, shuffling his feet and biting at his lip. "Sorry. I know you liked her a lot."

Ethan nods and slips into the room, perching on the edge of Benny's unmade bed and letting his eyes dart around the room. "She said she thought I liked someone else."

Benny's been wondering about that, but the angry Ethan had been more of a priority. "Yeah?" He asks, now that the other issue has been resolved. "Do you?"

"I don't know."

But maybe Benny does. Now that Ethan's actually looking at him, he picks up on things. He's got a shy smile going on, one that Benny had written off at first as guilty, but then there's the lip biting and the way that Ethan's watching him. It's not unlike the way he stares when he's about to have a vision, but he's never had one when touching Benny, so why would he start now? No, it's something else.

Benny sighs, trying to figure out what's going on. He drags a hand through his hair and sits in his computer chair, bouncing his foot slowly. "So, you..." He trails off when he spots Ethan mimic his movements and that's odd. It's almost like what he does with Sarah when he's in his awkward crushing mode and oh.

Oh.

"Me?"

And that's panicked Ethan, all nervous fidgeting and darting eyes, looking for an escape.

"E, calm down," he says, because this conversation has gotten more and more interesting and Ethan bolting will not solve anything. And even though he can feel his own heart beating out of his chest, he sounds totally calm and confident when he adds on a reassuring, "It's okay."

"It is?"

Hopeful Ethan. Benny can work with this. He stands and crosses the few feet to his bed to stand in front of Ethan, who's back in panicky mode, jumping to his feet, too.

"What're you... I mean," Ethan's mumbling, while Benny contemplates his next move. If he really wants to take this chance and risk their friendship for something more. But then Ethan's whining out his name again, a desperately hopeful, "Benny," that answers that question for him.

He surges forward, kissing Ethan with everything he's got because he can't mess this up. Not with Ethan, okay? Just... no. Ethan's hands land on his arms, and for a second he thinks the other boy is going to push him away, but then there are hands fisting in his shirt and pulling him in closer and yes.

Benny's grinning when they separate, fights the urge to kiss Ethan again (because he totally can) and watches Ethan try to form words.

"How'd you know it was you?" He finally manages.

"Sometimes I think I know you better than you do," he answers.

And right now? He knows Ethan is going to kiss him again, and hopefully again and again...


End file.
